Harvesting field grown tomatoes is a labour intensive process.  Unlike processing tomatoes which can be harvested mechanically, field grown trellised tomatoes has to be harvested by hand. The sorting can be done mechanically. Tomato fruit ripen according to temperature.  The ripening process is initiated by the hormone ethylene. In long life tomatoes, ethylene release is [...]

Solving the mystery of the two main types of tomato plants Indeterminate tomato varieties will grow 'forever'.  So they can grow over two seasons. Determinate varieties die after about 100 days.  If you have a very short season to grow your tomato crop it is cheaper to buy a determinate variety, but if you want [...]

When Jan van Riebeeck landed in the Cape on the 6th April 1652, one of the first priorities was to establish a vegetable industry to provide passing ships with fresh produce.  It was not until the 19th century, with the discovery of gold and diamonds, that the vegetable industry started to develop and expand into [...]

Quality is one of those elusive characteristics upon which so much depends but about which is so little known.  The number of definitions for quality probably equals the number of writers on the subject and the various interpretations range from those of extreme simplicity to others which are complicated and detailed.  It is important to [...]

Vegetables are sold in various from of packaging depending on the quality and quantity of the product and the price the farmer would like to obtain.  The trend is to pack high quality vegetables into smaller quantities i.e. smaller packaging and lower quality vegetables in to larger containers or sell them in bulk.  Thus the [...]

Marketing is the distribution, promotion and direction of horticultural products or services to your customers.  Marketing includes a wide range of activities and starts at selecting a name of your farm and produce, its location and how you will interact with clients and customers.  All businesses marketing environment consist of: Product Price Place and Promotion [...]

The life cycle of a product has four distinctive stages; Introduction, growth, maturity and decline.  During each of these stages the marketing costs of promoting the product declines (see Figure below).  This is because more and more people start to know the name of the product.  Each phase of the life cycle will be discussed [...]

The horticultural industry is a complicated network of intensive businesses that all seek to obtain a slice of the horticultural pie. The South African agricultural business sector is highly competitive and diversified. A simple graphical layout of the businesses that play a significant role in the horticultural industry is presented in the figure below. Each [...]